Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) and other human carried projectiles such as Man-portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS or MPADS) and shoulder-launched Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) represent serious threats to mobile land and aerial platforms. Even inexperienced RPG operators can engage a stationary target effectively from 150-300 meters, while experienced users could kill a target at up to 500 meters, and moving targets at 300 meters. One known way of protecting a platform against RPGs is often referred to as active protection and generally causes explosion or discharge of a warhead on the RPG at a safe distance away from the threatened platform. Another known protection approaches against RPGs and short range missiles are more passive and generally employ fitting the platform to be protected with armor (e.g., reactive armor, hybrid armor or slat armor).
Active Protection Systems (APS) have been proposed for ground vehicles for defense against RPGs and other rocket fired devices with a good success rate for quite some time. However, these systems are proposed to protect vehicles that are: 1) armored, 2) can carry heavy loads, and 3) have plenty of available space for incorporation of large critical systems. Currently these systems can weigh anywhere between 300 to 3000 lbs. and can protect the vehicle when intercepting incoming threats as close as 5 to 10 ft.
There is a need in the art for active protection systems for mobile aerial platforms, such as, for example, a helicopter, from an aerial threat, as well as for relatively lightweight, agile and unarmored or armored land vehicles. There is also a need for such systems to be portable and lightweight enough for carrying on aerial and other mobile platforms that may have significant weight and size constraints, or on which an active protection system may be easily installed. For some systems, there is a need to have an active protection system that can be incorporated into existing systems already installed on the platform in question.